I woke up this morning to the sound of a garbage truck going by

It doesn't currently stop at my house because I like to make sure things are sorted and end up in the right(ok better) places. My wife and I maintain a compost in the back corner of our lot and we recycle the majority of the paper, cardboard and assorted containers that make their way through our household. Then every 2 to three weeks I make a trip to the transfer station with my daughter and put it in the proper receptacles. It wasn't always like this I grew up in the 70's and as most Americans I was raised as a ravenous consumer of disposal of goods and services and most by-products ended up on the curb to be schlepped away by a dirty smelly gas-guzzling monster trash truck (unlike this one)that would then deposit all that stuff in a land-fill a few miles away from my home in the country somewhere. The cost of this fabulous service was rolled into my taxes. Now in the north and the south frequently trash removal services are yet another monthly bill on our credit card we need to pay. And I feel that these services don't always recycle the things we place in the recycling bin. That's why I do it myself now. In upstate New York they were very picky about what they would and wouldn't except in the recycling bin: this plastic and not that one, and only if sanitized, and only newspaper and only if it was in a separate bag etc. .

So currently we live in Upstate South Carolina. I am a German Teacher and my profession brought me here. My profession also led me to this point, this blog and many of the decisions I have made about the environment. I was born and raised in Upstate New York in a little town outside of Albany, NY called Voorheesville. The aforementioned dump has since closed and become a "transfer-station" itself. I wonder if officer Opey has measured it's (carbon) footprint or taken 8x10 glossy photos of it. (sorry for the random Alice's Restaurant reference, I'm an avid Arlo Guthrie fan as you can tell by my long winded blog post) So after graduating high school I "fled" to a little town in Germany for an 13th exchange year (they have one more year than we do for high school over there). It was during that year that I first learned about German culture, and habits. Even in 1987 Germany was far ahead of America when it came to environmental matters. Recycling and composting were commonplace. I didn't fully appreciate all the differences between these two industrialized countries until I returned to Germany with my wife and 2yr. old daughter in 2006 to obtain my masters degree through Middlebury college. In Germany they are organized as you may know and this extends even to their recycling. Even in public places like train stations and just out on the street they offer many receptacles for your trash (see photos above and below) At home it's easier though you have a composting bin (for food waste) and a "Gelbe Sack" (the yellow sack/bag) for everything else. You see in Germany there are laws about recycling and industry is responsible for all the packaging it produces and they must pay for the recycling of it. Since the enactment of this law in 1990 in Germany companies have rethought packaging and work with more recyclable materials and minimize packaging. This Wikipedia article explains it better look under concept for explanation of the yellow bags. Well that's it for today. I promise future posts will be more concise. I hope at least it gave you some food for thought. (here's another picture of a place to recycle/ put your trash in a Berlin subway.)